Motel murder defendant innocent

At the end of a two-day trial dominated by witnesses with lengthy criminal records, a Chatham County jury found late Wednesday that Reginald Sadatt Thompson was one of the few innocents in the room.

Thompson, 44, was cleared of the July 20, 2003, beating death of Stephen Shumate at the Savannah Motor Lodge on Ogeechee Road.

Thompson pumped his fist in the air and sighed heavily when the verdict was read around 11:30 p.m.

The case largely hinged on the testimony of Edward Chettenden, who said he and Shumate spent the better part of a weekend taking cocaine and cavorting with women at the motel, described as a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes.

Chettenden, who has 10 felony convictions in his past, said the two were partying in a room with another man when Thompson showed up, wooden bed post in hand.

He said Thompson demanded that Shumate pay his $60 drug debt, then smashed the victim twice across the head with the post.

Shumate died while in a coma in the hospital three days later.

The other man in the room, Mark Waller, initially told investigators that he, too, witnessed the beating, according to a recording of that interview.

But the four-time convicted felon changed his story on the stand, claiming that he was in another room and didn't see a thing.

Toni Rapier, six times a convicted felon, kept her story straight.

She said she was two rooms down when she cracked her door and saw the post-wielding Thompson standing outside Shumate's room, demanding to be let in. She barricaded her door and didn't see what happened, she said.

Defense attorney Mark Nathan called the three witnesses "the unholy trinity."

"I'm outraged that the state has brought this case against an innocent man, Reginald Thompson, on the testimony of drug dealers, criminal, thieves and liars," he said. "You have heard so many lies from the start to the finish in this courtroom. If I had a penny for each lie, I could retire."

Nathan claimed that either Chettenden or Waller committed the attack.

Fellow defense attorney Michael Edwards called to the stand Scott and Mary Anne Waters, a married couple who claimed that Waller actually confessed to them that he was the one who beat Shumate.

In the end, Assistant District Attorney George Asinc admitted his witnesses were unsavory. And he lamented the inconsistent stories.

But he said the testimonies that Chettenden and Rapier gave on the stand, and the one Waller initially told police, all mesh. Thompson killed Shumate, he said. Nothing else fits.

"The only common-sense answer that comports with the evidence is that these people are telling the truth," Asinc said. "For $60, a man's life was taken, brutally snuffed out in a vicious crime."